Writers Miss Scanlan Met

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7031, 15 December 1932, Page 2

Writers Miss Scanlan Met

Miss Scanlan related many interesting experiences when speaking at a gathering of womenfolk who extended her a welcome back to Palmerston North recently. Having visited 2 o countries in the course of her travels, she could speak with authority on overseas conditions —and especially in the once brilliant capitals of Vienna and Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Miss Scanlan told of meeting many notable.people, including John Galsworthy, H. G. Wells, and G. K. Chesterton. In a personal note to the New Zealand authorCSS, Galsworthy recalled a visit to these Islands 35 years ago. Ho informed her that his most vivid memories of our country were the picturesque poplar avenue at Pakowhai, Hastings, tho Wellington Club, on The Terrace, Wellington, cattle yards near Christchurch, and a lake in Otago. It was on that tour that Galsworthy met Joseph Conrad. Another who charmed Miss Scan-

lan was Annie S. Swan (Mrs Burnett Smith), the novelist and magazine storyteller, who wrote prolifically in the days gone by. She told the New Zealander that in the Victorian era a novelist did not achieve instantaneous notoriety and popularity; ono had to have more than two or three books published before one’s literary ability was permanently recognised. Now a whitc-haiTcd lady, with an old-world atmosphere, Annie S. Swan still possesses tho creative instinct. She is at work on another book. Miss Scanlan met this rather famous woman of Scotch extraction at a gathering of literary celebrities in tho Metropolis. It was a delightfully informal meeting, and the New Zealand ■writer had a most interesting talk with a writer who had a remarkable reading public in her day.

Mrs. B. Ewing lias returned to Woodville after a week’s holiday in Wellington,